A bipartisan panel of House lawmakers voted to kickstart a process that could lead to the expulsion of a congressional Democrat accused of laundering millions of disaster relief funds into her campaign account.<\/p>\n
A House Ethics investigative subcommittee approved a motion for summary judgment, effectively finding Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., guilty of nearly all alleged violations outlined by the committee earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The verdict came after a rare public ethics hearing<\/a> on Thursday \u2014 the first since 2010 \u2014 that lasted more than six hours as lawmakers from both parties grilled Cherfilus-McCormick\u2019s counsel. The eight-member adjudicatory subcommittee, helmed by Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., announced its decision in a written statement Friday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n “After careful deliberation that lasted until well past midnight, the adjudicatory subcommittee found that Counts 1-15 and 17-26 of the SAV [statement of alleged violations] had been proven,” committee leaders said in a statement.<\/p>\n EX-‘SQUAD’ DEM APPEARS TO BE LEANING ON RADICAL ACTIVIST AT CENTER OF DAMNING TLAIB REPORT IN COMEBACK BID<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The panel\u2019s myriad charges against Cherfilus-McCormick, who is facing a separate federal criminal indictment, ranged from using ineligible funds to finance her campaign to repeatedly filing false financial disclosure forms and seeking “special favors” with recipients of earmark funding requests.<\/p>\n The panel will meet after the Easter recess to determine its recommended punishment, which could be as severe as expulsion. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., has vowed to move forward with his resolution that would expel Cherfilus-McCormick regardless of the outcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under House rules, two-thirds of lawmakers have to agree to expel a member, meaning Steube\u2019s resolution would need the support of some Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n House Democratic leadership has largely stood by Cherfilus-McCormick so far, though some congressional Democrats are signaling their discomfort with the allegations against their indicted colleague.<\/p>\n “The allegations before us are extremely serious,” Rep. Mark Desaulnier, D-Calif., said at the start of the hearing Thursday. “They not only concern an individual member\u2019s conduct, they also implicate the public\u2019s confidence in the House\u2019s integrity as an institution.”<\/p>\n Cherfilus-McCormick, who first won election to Congress in 2021, is accused of stealing more than $5 million in disaster relief funds that were improperly paid to her family\u2019s healthcare company,<\/a> among other criminal allegations. She and her siblings allegedly used the illicit funds to jumpstart her congressional campaign and for personal use, including the purchase of a large diamond ring that Cherfilus-McCormick appeared to have worn in her official congressional portrait.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cherfilus-McCormick has pleaded not guilty to the stunning federal charges brought in 2025. If convicted in federal court, Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, faces up to 53 years in prison.<\/p>\n WATCHDOG RELEASES SCATHING REPORT ON TLAIB’S ALLEGED TIES TO TERRORIST GROUPS WARNING OF ‘POTENTIAL RISKS’<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n The House ethics panel\u2019s investigation into Cherfilus-McCormick preceded the 2025 federal criminal indictment by more than two years. During that time, Cherfilus-McCormick shifted between four different attorneys while largely refusing to cooperate with the bipartisan panel.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Cherfilus-McCormick sought to use the fact of her new legal representation to further delay the committee\u2019s proceedings until June \u2014 a request the eight-member panel promptly denied in a closed-door session. Her new attorney, William Barzee, repeatedly claimed a violation of Cherfilus-McCormick\u2019s due process rights while maintaining her innocence.<\/p>\n “For you to sit here and make the claim that we, the committee, is trying to trample upon the rights of your client. I take offense to that,” Guest told Barzee in a combative exchange. “For two years we’ve tried to get documents from your client. Not only have we requested documents, but we have subpoenaed those documents. Those documents were not provided for two years.”<\/p>\n “I’m personally offended because I know the work that this committee goes to protect all members and to make sure that we go above and beyond,” Guest continued.<\/p>\n Members of both parties appeared unconvinced by Barzee\u2019s argument, attempting to claim that Cherfilus-McCormick was entitled to the millions of dollars she accepted from her family\u2019s company that stemmed from the FEMA overpayments.<\/a><\/p>\n When he claimed that an undated chart was evidence of a “profit-sharing agreement” showing her legal title to the money, the bipartisan panel appeared visibly perturbed.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I did a lot of business transaction law for a number of years before I came to Congress. I drafted a lot of profit-sharing agreements. Never saw one that was just a chart that was unsigned,” Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, told Barzee.<\/p>\n Later in the hearing, Barzee argued that because Cherfilus-McCormick is of Haitian descent, it was not atypical to have a “handshake agreement” to divvy up millions of dollars between her and her family instead of a formal legal document.<\/p>\n Cherfilus-McCormick faces an upcoming federal criminal trial this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bipartisan panel of House lawmakers voted to kickstart a process that could lead to the expulsion of a congressional Democrat accused of laundering millions of disaster relief funds into her campaign account. A House Ethics investigative subcommittee approved a motion for summary judgment, effectively finding Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., guilty of nearly all alleged … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}